What are... Spreadsheets?

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Before electronic spreadsheets, numerical information couldn't be changed to answer questions without an enormous amount of work. Computerized spreadsheets allow us to manipulate data to easily answer "what if" questions. A couple of keystrokes can give you an answer in less than a second. The power of a spreadsheet is its ability to let you set up relationships between sets of numbers, and then play with the numbers to see what happens.

Spreadsheet construction and use requires students to identify relationships and patterns in the data they want to represent using a spreadsheet. Students must determine which data to include, how it should be arranged, what calculations should be performed, and how to display results in a meaningful manner. Spreadsheets are excellent tools for graphing data and answering "what if" questions such as "What would happen to the acceleration of a rolling ball if we increased the mass but not the force?" or "What will the population of Canada be in 10 years if the current growth rate increases by 3% each year?".